SoulStorm ARG - 1029.io

[FrustratedAssassin]

What we need is some kind of software that highlights the difference between 2 pictures. Like an automatic "spot the 7 differences" game solver.

Except that wouldn't work, because the picture also zooms in as the letters appear.

[Vexen]

Somebody should try inverting the colours of the gif.

update: just did that and it was just as hard to read.

[Xavier]

New tweet you guys:

Listen to the spirit of the past. Rise with us.

— SPIRIT OF 1029 (@SPIRITOF1029) August 25, 2016

[SgabbitGabbiar]

New video with new messages:

https://twitter.com/OddworldInc/stat...84774450249728

EDIT:

[Xavier]

It's on Facebook too, I'll try to get it on TOGG this evening.

[Connell]

Spirit of the past, eh? This is exciting, I hope it's building up to the big reveal. Anyone got any ideas on the text in the video? I feel like I can see the word "like" starting from the second letter in. It's hard to distinguish. I'm out but I'll have another look later on.

Does anyone know of any programmes where you can "bend" parts of an image. Does Photoshop have this functionality? It will probably be easier to definitively say which characters are which if we can make the letters straight again. Unless anyone can figure out what the phrase is anyway

EDIT: There's also a message flicker during the picture of Abe's hand tattoo. Can't figure it out on my phone though.

[STM]

Done the obvious ones.

? l i k ? o ? ? (?)

Three of those weird ones look very similar, could they be e's, a's?

e l i k e o e ?

a l i k e o a ? I dunno


Also there's another flicker in the hand image about 6 seconds before the end but I can't work it out.

[Connell]

The problem with the unknown letters are they're so bizarre it's hard to guess what they are. Perhaps a mix of letters and numbers? I say that because there doesn't seem to be any logical word it could be when you assume the rest of the letters. Has anyone managed to grab the message from the hand tattoo picture?

Also, what are people's opinions on the relevance to the music being used in these videos? I mentioned yesterday, if I'm not mistaken, that these are new compositions. Are they relevant to the puzzles? Any hidden clues like Morse code etc? Or are they just cool remixes made specially for these videos?

EDIT: Just before the letters appear across the middle of the screen, they flash at the top, and appear to be more clear. In this screengrab I can make out "e d e" Note the flick of the middle letter which I think is a d, at the top extends onto Abe's forehead, and flicks out at the bottom right. I believe it's the part of the phrase after the "l i k". So as a whole it'd be;

"e l i k e d e ? ?" Still missing a few characters. Here it is nonetheless:



SECOND EDIT:

So I got home and I decided to give my idea a try of re-warping the image in photoshop to undo the bend that has been applied to the letters. The letters match up with the portion that appears in the other image I posted. Here's an image of them warped into place, and then with my interpretation marked on top:



The "d" gets a bit lost in Abe's face there, but it's safe to assume that it's a d from the first picture in my post.



Compare all the images and see if you agree. I think the phrase reads "e l i k e d e t s" but that means nothing so it could well be wrong. Sorry about the garbled post.

[Gunnr]

"Likee Ed T's"
Finally some new merch!!
Jk

but looks to be an anagram or a maybe cipher text like before but I even doubt that. Time to try some new things then?


EDIT:


It looks like numbers to me. In this pic it looks like I managed to catch a 6(on the right half of the scar symbol). There's more but as they seem to flash and alternate on one side of the hand to the other and moves so fast its hard for me to pause and take a pic to show anymore numbers. Ican keep trying later today,though

edit: ok cool @connell vv

[Connell]

With regards to the hand tattoo image, I've pulled out the individual frames where things pop up, (there's 4 to be precise) but I don't know of any possible photo editing technique that will allow us to separate the message from the picture itself. Playing with the colour levels of the photo just adjusts the entire picture and the characters are as lost as they were before.

The hand tattoo photo doesn't move as fast as the other pictures that pan though, so Xav's idea of a programme that shows you just the pixels that have changed between one photo and another might allow us to isolate the individual pixels that pop up, and thus see the hidden message. But, does anyone know of any programme like this? Even though they appear the same colour to the human eye, there must be a difference in each individual pixel when they pop up.

EDIT: Having played it over and over again, I'm pretty sure what is appearing is actually the numbers "8, 2, 9, 1" in corners of the hand. I believe they're written in this font:

[Connell]

So it turns out Photoshop has the exact function I was talking about; if you add 2 layers in and then set one to "difference" it shows you everything that has changed between one layer and the other in white, and things that remain the same in black. Thanks to the lack of movement we can see the numbers bleeding through:









The 9 is the biggest stretch of the imagination, as unfortunately it is almost completely lost to the background image. But given the rest, I think it's safe to assume it's a 9. Does anyone know what font it is being used? It'd be great to be able to overlay actual text on the images to confirm.

Once I've finished doing these I'll go back and do the clip from yesterday and see if there's anything to be learnt from that.

EDIT: Frick sorry double posted.

[Gunnr]

I think this is the font style




Nice work, man (:

[Connell]

I think this is the font style:

Nice work, man (:

That is indeed the font, cheers for finding that man!

I've just converted some of the pictures from the "Stiff bridge" image from yesterday, and the pixel difference between when the numbers flare up and the normal picture are so small that it's literally impossible to decipher the numbers. Either they didn't intend for us to actually be able to tell what the numbers are, or there's a method I'm unaware of for finding them. Because for now, it's practically impossible.



Here's the first image with the "difference" shown. (The top left of the bridge) It's likely that it's an "8" again, as like the hand tattoo image from today there is 4 individual frames where numbers pop up, unfortunately this is the only one that is remotely legible.



Here's the second frame with "difference" shown. It's basically impossible to see a difference. The change is in the bottom left. I drew over the shape here to show that it probably is a 2:



For now I can't think of another method to definitely figure out what number it is. The next 2 frames aren't worth uploading because you literally can't see anything, but they're most likely the "9" and the "1"

It's also worth pointing out the 4 numbers appear in the same positions as on the hand tattoo image. (E.G: 8 in the top left, 2 in the bottom right, 9 in the top left and 1 in the bottom right.)

EDIT: For good measure as I said before, I overlayed text on top of the hand tattoo image to confirm we were looking at "8291". The 8 overlapped with the 1 when the frames were combined so I did it separately:

[SgabbitGabbiar]

Nice work Connell!

EDIT : i tried to write "8291" to the 1029.io link and it shows this :

http://1029.io/8291/

[FrustratedAssassin]

Whoa. This is a ton of progress. I can't believe I didn't think I could do the overlaying trick. This is great.

[Connell]

I sort of feel like it only seems like progress. I mean we already knew the phrase "8291" was everywhere, and aside from that we just got a string of letters that may or may not be correct (the "e l i k e d e t s" phrase). I have no idea what to do with any of it sadly It was pretty cool to see the 8291 on the hand come to life with the overlaying trick, but aside from that this progress doesn't help us much. Perhaps we need to look more at the elikedets bit and see if it's correct, or can be ciphered or whatever.

I'm so ready for more clues, can't wait haha.

[seniormeatbox]

Excite

[FrustratedAssassin]

I sort of feel like it only seems like progress. I mean we already knew the phrase "8291" was everywhere, and aside from that we just got a string of letters that may or may not be correct (the "e l i k e d e t s" phrase). I have no idea what to do with any of it sadly It was pretty cool to see the 8291 on the hand come to life with the overlaying trick, but aside from that this progress doesn't help us much. Perhaps we need to look more at the elikedets bit and see if it's correct, or can be ciphered or whatever.

I'm so ready for more clues, can't wait haha.

I put elikedets through an anagram solver. It's probably nothing, but there are a few sentences that start with "ed".

[Havoc]

Just throwing my thoughts out there; 8291 is only one digit different from making 1029, that being the 8. Turn the 8 on its side and you get the symbol for infinity. Big Face was drawing the infinity symbol in the sand after Abe died during his escape from RuptureFarms 1029...

I might be overthinking it by miles but I thought it was an interesting 'out of the box' thought.

[PenguinX45654]

Long time viewer of this arg forum, first time poster (I'm usually not very good at these sort of things and usually find it easier to read everyone else's theories and revelations)

I was looking at the phrase that was found 'elikedets' and our new favourite number 8291 and have a couple of theories

1 - there 9 letters in our phrase and 8291 could map to a letter which would give 'tlse' which when put through an anagram solver didn't give anything useful. I wasn't convinced that the last letter was an s either so I made that letter a wildcard and same result.

2 - 8291 is a word with 4 different letters that would be a cipher for our phrase. Words I thought of were bone and brew but when put into a keyword cipher, nothing resembling a word or useful anagram came out.

Don't know if any of this helps at all and this is my first ARG so my skills are pretty limited.

[Gunnr]

If the message in the Abe concept art vid is "Spirits" Held this way"
could it be a reference to the Ghost traps in Exoddus? As in informing you where the spirits are being held.

Just throwing my 2 cents around outside the box. As far as the letters e l i k e d e t s being an anagram, Here are some random words i got out of rearranging and messing around:

elite desk
like steed
like eds te
tis leeked
delete sike
delete skie(s) extra s



I'm sure we're to do something else with these letters if they are correct(e l i k e d e t s)

[Connell]

I'm not sure about the S on the end. I think it could possibly be another E, or a whole different letter entirely. These are good ideas though guys, an anagram is a possibility because at the minute it does look like gibberish.

The thing is, with previous steps of the ARG, when we've been presented with gibberish, there's always been a hint also hidden somewhere as to what to do with that gibberish (E.G giving us random letters, as well as a hint suggesting that it needs to be ciphered down 13 steps etc.) but at the moment we just have the letters. Maybe we've missed something, or we need more info to proceed?

[SgabbitGabbiar]

Here we go again :

https://twitter.com/OddworldInc/stat...90039494115329

[Connell]

Looks to be exactly the same message as the one one on the picture of Abe. You can see "l i k e d e t e" straight away. At least we now know it's not an S on the end and it is in fact another e.

I interpret the fact it's the same message 2 days in a row as them saying we're missing something. But what though?

EDIT:

I warped the text back so we could be 100% sure it is the same message as yesterday;



That one is clearly just "i k e d e t e" to me



This one's a bit more confusing as it reads "e l i k e d e t" then a random mark on the end that I previously thought was an S, but in the previous picture above it would appear that an e comes after the "d e t" part. Weird.

Here's some gifs for giffy goodness:

[SligValet]

I like the tea?
I like Ed's tea

[gapowicz]

Maybe it was mentioned earlier or something but when I looked yesterday at concept video on Facebook ( one with Abe ) , I noticed something familiar to white stripes which were played for 2 seconds near ending of clip .Those were before previous videos , which eventually was a voice message or something. On Twitter Spirit of 1029 said ,,Listen to the spirit of the past.Rise with us. " ; first part is more important . Listen to the spirit of past right ? It can referenced to Abe . His concept video could have sound message , but now probably codded with familiar way like in previous videos ... Maybe it is a wrong way to follow , maybe good ... I don't know but just wanted to share with you , guys ...

[Manco]

So right now the clues we have found in the new videos are as follows:

• “hold this way” [x]
• “spirit” [x]
• An unclear message that could be “remains we will not be” [x]
• An unclear message that could be “help” or something similar [x]
• “8291” [x]
• “elikedete” [x]

We also have the following hints:

• The tweet “Listen to the spirit of the past. Rise with us.” [x]
• The page 1029.io/8291 which to my knowledge hasn’t been linked to any other puzzles yet.

We still need to clarify the two unclear messages, and then work out what “elikedete” might refer to. My guess would be that this is part of a larger string, as the phrase appears to be cut off at both sides of the video frame.

[Connell]

To add to that, we also never found out the significance of the letters "ETNO" occasionally being highlighted when you load the 1029.io page. There doesn't seem to be any set pattern as to when they appear highlighted, and it's possible this is just to add to the "glitchy" theme the site has going on.

Also, the number string of "< !-- 33 74 72 83 51 -- >" is still present in the source code with no explanation. Whether or not this all ties in is yet to be seen. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get another throwback video with a clue that will allow us to piece all this together.

E: Every time I see Vikit15 online I'm convinced he's gonna drop the answer to the whole thing. His only 2 posts on the forum are him solving steps that we were completely stuck on. Help us out, Vikit

[vikit15]

Yeah I´m good at puzzles and stuff like that so I´m really enjoying this ARG but for now this all is just random texts... but do not worry I´m here and watching so I hope I will help again

[Gunnr]

I totally forgot about the "ETNO" message
i still think it could be "NOTE"or "TONE" both of which have to do with sound.
Maybe something hidden in a vid we have with music or sound or parhaps a pending vid.

With the The concept art vids gibberish, the word "DELETE' popsout at me amoungst the letters. Maybe we are to delete something and enter something else like into the 1029.io link?